The Stellar Lense Productions team was selected from hundreds of entrants to compete in the video challenge, which is an American Idol-style competition for the YouTube world.

The YOMYOMF Network is a hugely popular channel on YouTube, founded by Justin Lin, director of the The Fast and the Furious. The network’s partners include YouTube heavy hitters Ryan Higa, Kevin Wu, and Chester See.

Gomez and his three teammates competed in the second season of the YOMYOMF Internet Icon contest, which was held at Los Angeles Center Studios.

“One thing we can say is we absolutely loved getting to know the YouTube community,” says Gomez, who lives in Fresno, California. “Everybody is very inclusive, they’re very supportive, and they’re to willing work with everybody.”

As in other reality show competitions, contestants are given themed challenges and tight deadlines. Every day, the 10 competing Internet Icon teams had about 6 hours to produce and submit a completed video, based around the challenge theme. The judges then critiqued each entry, eliminating a team in the process.

Gomez said his team received a lot of praise for “Blasting,” their entry in the first video challenge (Gomez can be seen walking away from the ‘action’ in the last scene):

Stellar Lense was eliminated during the second round, but were invited to create a video for a later “chase scene” challenge, which they did. The team also participated in a live taping of the Internet Icon Finale in late July.

“They said they got a lot of feedback from viewers, and even some of the producers, that they wished we were still on the show,” says Gomez. “I think, as of right now, [the chase scene video] is our highest viewed video on our channel.”

Gomez said that even though his team didn’t win, being part of the Internet Icon competition was a great learning experience and has positively impacted his YouTube channel and his video company, which he now works at full-time.

“We jumped from about 700 viewers at the start of the show to more than 5,000,” says Gomez. “It was more than a success.”